5.6T WD - $169 - Do Not Buy


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Agree it looks like a relabeled Red.

 

I suspect these are from a canceled high-volume order ... probably due to the very short time between 5TB and 6TB Reds (whoever ordered all the 5TB units likely switched to 6TBs).  [Or perhaps WD just wants to clear out their stock of 5TB units, but wanted to limit the warranty window, so they just relabeled the drives.]

 

In any event, it provides a very nice window of opportunity to get some very reasonably priced drives ... $32/TB is certainly an attractive price.

 

 

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Just keep in mind that since they are an OEM unit, the warranty is with the reseller, NOT WD.  Under specifications, it outright says 1 Year Warranty from Reseller.

 

WD / Seagate both will sell high volume resellers drives with NO warranty at a reduced price, and then let the OEM slap whatever warranty they feel like.  (I had a HD pull from a Lacie box that was like that)

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I suspect 5700 is what Reds spin at.  I know they get slightly lower sustained rates than the 5900rpm Seagate NAS units; but WD just says "IntelliPower" for the drive's rpm (implying it varies based on demand).    Based on their slightly slower data rates than the Seagates, 5700rpm seems just about right.

 

 

 

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The "green" drives were originally 5400 RPM, and in those days were in lower capacity drives with lower aerial density (in one revolution they would read/write less data). And those worked quite well for me over the years. So I would not say this drive would be slow by any means. Maybe not screaming fast, but quite acceptable for media purposes. They also tend to run cooler and should, all other things being equal, have longer lives than 7200rpm.

 

Slower spinning disks are not great for applications that require lots of random reads and writes, like large databases. But for media applications that are largely sequential, they will perform quite well. SSDs are what you want for very fast random access.

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They also tend to run cooler and should, all other things being equal, have longer lives than 7200rpm.

 

 

Is there data to show this as fact?

I've had 10,000 RPM RPM drives outlast 5400 RPM drives by many years.

Each was running 24x7x365.  While the 10,000 RPM drives were hot all the time, the 5400 RPM drives were not.

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They also tend to run cooler and should, all other things being equal, have longer lives than 7200rpm.

Is there data to show this as fact?

I've had 10,000 RPM RPM drives outlast 5400 RPM drives by many years.

Each was running 24x7x365.  While the 10,000 RPM drives were hot all the time, the 5400 RPM drives were not.

Two identical drives, one spinning faster and the other slower, the one spinning faster should wear out faster.

 

But I have no facts to back up the claim. Just seems rather common sensical.

 

I do expect that 10,000RPM drives are engineered differently than the 5400RPM drives, and therefore "all things" are not equal!

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They also tend to run cooler and should, all other things being equal, have longer lives than 7200rpm.

Is there data to show this as fact?

I've had 10,000 RPM RPM drives outlast 5400 RPM drives by many years.

Each was running 24x7x365.  While the 10,000 RPM drives were hot all the time, the 5400 RPM drives were not.

Two identical drives, one spinning faster and the other slower, the one spinning faster should wear out faster.

 

But I have no facts to back up the claim. Just seems rather common sensical.

 

I do expect that 10,000RPM drives are engineered differently than the 5400RPM drives, and therefore "all things" are not equal!

 

I think the only real measurable factor is heat and if each is within tolerance of rated levels, they last as long as each other.

 

A 7200 RPM drive is designed to run at that speed so I would expect that to be engineered differently as well.

Just as I think drives that are designed as NAS drives are engineered for specifics such as runtime, vibrations, heat, etc, etc.

 

My point is, speed has not shown to be an issue in my usage if heat is managed well.

I always purchase 7200 RPM drives if I know I'm going to bang on the machines and lower speed if they are mainly archival.

 

In comparison, I've had many failures of low usage WD EACS/EADS greeen 1Tb drives vs only 1 failure of a 7200 RPM Seagate 1Tb drive and 1 failure of a Seagate 3TB 7200 RPM drive.

 

 

EDIT:  I should add, my experience doesn't really amount to a hill of beans.

What matters is larger amount of data to gather proper statistics, which is why I asked.

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Clearly different drives are designed with different physical limitations.    I've got an old 74GB 10,000rpm Raptor that's still going strong after a decade on one of my spare systems [Doesn't get used a lot these days, but it ran 24/7 for several years].

 

One very clear sign of impending problems is when a drive starts running hotter than usual ... this is true regardless of the type or speed of the drive.    If it typically runs within a particular temperature range (regardless of what that range is) and begins to run above that, it is, in my experience, definitely on its way out.    I've seen a fair number of studies that say the same thing.

 

Given that most enterprise class drives run at 7200rpm (or faster) I doubt that rpm alone is an indicator of drive longevity.  However, the faster drives require significantly more airflow to keep them operating in their optimal temperature range, which equates to higher rpm, noisier fans.    The lower rpm NAS units can run cool with far less airflow ... and at the same time use far less power.  These are the primary advantages I see in these units.

 

Note also that the very high rpm drives [10k and 15k] don't have nearly the areal density [brian:  Note that it's "areal density" ... not "aerial"] of the NAS units -- so they don't have nearly the gain in sustained data rate that you might expect;  but they DO have much faster seek times, so for random access databases where the average transfer size is nominal they are MUCH better than their lower speed counterparts.  The NAS units with 1TB/platter (and above) densities can reach very acceptable sustained data rates (200MB/s or so) on their outer platters, so for large files there's little reason to use faster drives.

 

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Out of the drive failures I've had on my 2TB, it was the Green 5400/5900 rpm drives that have failed compared to the 7200rpm drive that was parity thats going strong.

 

I also noticed during my parity checks the old 2TB 5400rpm units are running hotter than the newer 4TB 7200rpm HGST units. It seems things have changed in the 5 years between designs.

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... I also noticed during my parity checks the old 2TB 5400rpm units are running hotter than the newer 4TB 7200rpm HGST units. ...

 

Are they all doing this?  Or only some of the drives?    As I noted above, when temps start to run hotter than they used to, that's a good indication of pending failure.

 

 

 

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... I also noticed during my parity checks the old 2TB 5400rpm units are running hotter than the newer 4TB 7200rpm HGST units. ...

 

Are they all doing this?  Or only some of the drives?    As I noted above, when temps start to run hotter than they used to, that's a good indication of pending failure.

 

Most of them. They're all around 5 years old. The younger ones are maybe 4. This is why I'm migrating everything over to new 4tb HGST. Preventative maintainence steps. The high Temps only exhibit themselves during the parity checks. During normal serving of movies to the players, the tremps are more reasonable.

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... I also noticed during my parity checks the old 2TB 5400rpm units are running hotter than the newer 4TB 7200rpm HGST units. ...

 

Are they all doing this?  Or only some of the drives?    As I noted above, when temps start to run hotter than they used to, that's a good indication of pending failure.

 

Most of them. They're all around 5 years old. The younger ones are maybe 4. This is why I'm migrating everything over to new 4tb HGST. Preventative maintainence steps. The high Temps only exhibit themselves during the parity checks. During normal serving of movies to the players, the tremps are more reasonable.

 

 

Could this be an issue with the machine's overall capacity to provide enough airflow?

Perhaps a badblocks in read-only mode would provide a model of temperature of the course of a scan.

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... I also noticed during my parity checks the old 2TB 5400rpm units are running hotter than the newer 4TB 7200rpm HGST units. ...

 

Are they all doing this?  Or only some of the drives?    As I noted above, when temps start to run hotter than they used to, that's a good indication of pending failure.

 

Most of them. They're all around 5 years old. The younger ones are maybe 4. This is why I'm migrating everything over to new 4tb HGST. Preventative maintainence steps. The high Temps only exhibit themselves during the parity checks. During normal serving of movies to the players, the tremps are more reasonable.

 

 

Could this be an issue with the machine's overall capacity to provide enough airflow?

Perhaps a badblocks in read-only mode would provide a model of temperature of the course of a scan.

 

The drives are in Norco 5in3 cages and should be getting plenty of airflow. I have 2 Norco cages in the bottom most of a Stacker 810 case, 3 120mm exhaust fans on top and 1 120mm exhaust fan in back.

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I am not a big fan of the Norco 5in3s. I bought one and wound up trading it with another user for a SuperMicro.

 

Both of them have a "tray" that you mount the drive to before inserting in the slot. The Norco's has a metal plate the covers the bottom of the drive, which tends to be the hottest part. The SM's, on the other hand, are horseshoe like and leave the bottom completely open to airflow. The SM's are also made out of aluminum vs the steel of the Norcos. Finally the SM's also have a bigger (92mm) fan vs the smaller (80mm) size. The stock 92mm fans have great airflow but are not silent, but you could buy a 92mm replacement that is quieter and moves more air than an 80mm fan.

 

If your drives have never cooled well, my money is on the Norco's design flaws causing it.

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The current revision of the Norco's have large holes in the metal slot dividers (Pictures of new tray). I think they're up to revision 3 now. One of them was PCB redesign to have softer LEDs and the other was the tray setup. I do wish they had 92mm fans though.

 

But my drives were normally around 29-30 C during typical read-only operations and maybe low 40's during parity checks. They were hitting 50 during the last parity check in the 4-in-3 Stacker cages with 120mm fans. The 2TB drives have certainly aged and showing warning signs. Of the 2TB drives, the WD are now running hotter than the Seagates by 2-4 C. It used to be the other way around 4-5 years ago, and I hadn't changed the cages or layout over the entire time I had them.

 

I just migrated to the Norco cages within the past month. I jumped on the NewEgg deal to pick up 2 of them. This is my first large scale change over the past 4-5 years. I even swapped the Seagate and WD 2TB drive slots around and the WD still run hotter now.

 

I do wish unRAID had a statistical collection system. It would be interesting to see when in their lifetime the drives temps have increased during read-only and parity checks.

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Still sucks IMO. Here is the SuperMicro one.

 

But this doesn't explain the escalating drive temps.

 

CSE-PT17L-B.jpg?osCsid=pn5i84c9f0elkb2qk0mhg0sfm7

 

I have cleared out all my drives smaller than 3T from my primary array, but, with rare exception, all of my 1T and 2T drives have survived and are working fine for backups. In particular I had 10 of the EACS and EADS WD 1T drives - and only one has failed (10%). But I had 2 of the 2T drives, and one of those failed (50%). Most of my 2T were Hitachi's, and all are still working fine.

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this doesn't explain the escalating drive temps.

 

Vents, fans, cables in the way.

Blow out everything. If that doesn't change things, you can do the badblocks test in readonly and watch the drive temps over the course of the read. Then make a determination.

 

Garycase's statement regarding age and temperature rising makes sense to some degree.

However I had Seagate 7200 RPM SCSI drives that used to run so hot they would burn you yet never failed. They lasted years like that until I retired them.  Drives today aren't the same as the old days. I would say when you hear the drive singing (that high pitched whine) then it's time to consider upcoming replacement.

 

Another idea would be to turn off spin down timers and let the drives sit spinning without activity to gauge cooling capability vs power vs bearing heat vs head motion.  I.E. There are a few factors that come into play here.

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Well damn...  :-[

 

I just opened the case up to feel for airflow in the new Norco SS-500 cages. The caddy with the 2TB drives doesn't have a working fan. I have the fan connectors run out from the caddy to a separate power line from a fan-bus controller. I suspect the line to that cage is busted.

 

Before I swapped the cages in, I powered them up in default mode (connected to the Norco cage power plug) to make certain the fans ran. I also tested each cage connected to the fan-bus controller. Everything worked fine. Then I removed the old cages and moved the drives into their new cage.

 

I must have messed something up or a wire came loose on the final installation. I'll know more tomorrow.

 

I'm actually surprise the drives are running as cool as they are with no fan at all (low 30s)!  ;D

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Well damn...  :-[

 

I just opened the case up to feel for airflow in the new Norco SS-500 cages. The caddy with the 2TB drives doesn't have a working fan. ...

 

... if they're now running hotter than they used to, that's a good indication that either the drives are failing; or the fans on the Norco cages aren't working (easy to check)

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